This major new exhibition by Lap-See Lam (b. 1990) is the first-ever institutional exhibition of the artist’s work in the UK. The commission develops from Lap-See Lam's presentation for the Nordic Pavilion at the 60th Biennale di Venezia, 2024.
The exhibition will continue a cycle of works inspired by the real setting of the ‘Sea Palace’, a three-storey floating Chinese restaurant in the shape of a dragon. The Sea Palace was commissioned in the 1990s, sailing from Shanghai to Europe and later docking at Dreamers’ Quay in Gothenburg. Facing economic challenges and decay, it was eventually repurposed as a haunted funhouse.
For Lam, the ‘Sea Palace’ provides knotty and often dissonant source material to address the translation – and mistranslation – of cultural heritage. The artist’s work to date has traced her own family history and intergenerational experiences via the kitschy and decadent decor of Chinese restaurants in Western Europe. Lam’s grandparents established the ‘Bamboo Garden’ restaurant upon their arrival from Hong Kong in the 1970s, and her practice considers notions of belonging by examining the cultural and communal fabric of the Cantonese diaspora.
At the centre of the exhibition at Studio Voltaire, Lam has produced a new film that unfolds from the ‘Sea Palace’s’ hybrid spaces – at once a restaurant, horror house, and vessel - combining its rich past with magical elements that draw inspiration from Cantonese Opera. Each of the performers within the film enacts a specific story relating to the history and imagined future of the Cantonese diaspora, led by the character Lo Ting, a mythological fish-hybrid figure who is believed to be the ancestor of the Hong Kong people. Relating a transnational sea journey, the work explores intergenerational experiences of separation, displacement and collective memory across oceans.
A specific characteristic of Cantonese Opera is the elaborate structures which are built using bamboo scaffolding to form temporary opera houses and stages. Reflecting this, Lam will create a large-scale immersive installation of bamboo scaffolding within the gallery. This ambitious intervention will both respond to the architecture of Studio Voltaire’s distinctive chapel gallery and form a setting for the film itself.
Relating to a transnational sea journey, the artist’s new series of works explores separation, displacement, and collective memory across oceans.
